The present invention relates to an electronic component mounting method of mounting electronic components on a substrate, and an electronic component mounting apparatus.
An electronic component mounting apparatus comprises a moving table for moving a mounting head which picks up an electronic component from an electronic component feeder onto an object substrate. As such moving table, an orthogonal coordinate system table for making linear motions in the X, Y, Z directions is widely employed. This moving table generally comprises a substrate recognition camera which moves together with the mounting head. By taking the substrate by this camera, the position of the substrate is detected, and the position is adjusted when mounting the electronic component on the basis of the result of position detection.
Other conventional electronic component mounting apparatus comprises a plurality of moving tables for the purpose of enhancing the mounting efficiency, and by using a plurality of mounting heads for one substrate, electronic components are mounted simultaneously by parallel operation. In such conventional mounting apparatus, each one of the plurality of moving tables has a substrate recognition camera. Prior to mounting of electronic components, the object substrate is recognized by a plurality of cameras of the plurality of moving tables.
In such conventional method, however, one substrate must be recognized plural times, and the time of moving the camera to the recognition point on the substrate is duplicated. As a result, the cycle time of the entire mounting process is longer, and the productivity is lowered:
It is hence an object of the invention to present an electronic component mounting method capable of shortening the cycle time and enhancing the productivity.
The electronic component mounting method of the invention is a method of mounting a plurality of electronic components on a substrate by using a plurality of moving tables. Each moving table of the plurality of moving tables has a mounting head for picking up and transferring each electronic component, and a camera for recognizing the substrate. The mounting method comprises:
(a) a step of taking a substrate for calibration having a reference mark for position calibration by the camera, and obtaining position calibration data intrinsic to each moving table having the camera,
(b) a step of taking the substrate by only one of the cameras prior to mounting of each electronic component, and recognizing the position of the substrate, and
(c) a step of picking up each electronic component by each mounting head, and mounting the electronic component on the substrate.
The step of mounting each electronic component on the substrate includes a step of controlling the position of the moving table on the basis of the substrate position recognition result and the position calibration data.
The electronic component mounting apparatus of the invention comprises:
(a) a base,
(b) a first moving table and a second moving table installed on the base, in which the first moving table and second moving table are movable on the base, the first moving table has a first mounting head and a first camera, the second moving table has a second mounting head and a second camera, and the first mounting head and second mounting head have a function of picking up and transferring a plurality of electronic components,
(c) position calibration data acquiring means for recognizing the position of the first moving table and second moving table, and calibrating the position of the first moving table and second moving table,
(d) position recognizing means for recognizing the position of the substrate mounted on the base, in which the position recognizing means is recognized when taken by the first camera only,
(e) controlling means for controlling the position of the first moving table and second moving table on the basis of the position recognizing means and position calibration data acquiring means, and
(f) driving means for driving the first moving table, second moving table, first mounting head and second mounting head.
In this configuration, the cycle time is shortened. As a result, the productivity is enhanced.